


How I've Missed You, My Love

by alienor_woods



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods/pseuds/alienor_woods
Summary: "Tell Raven to aim for the one spot of green, and you'll find me."In which it's SpaceKru that falls to Earth during Clarke's final transmission. In which Madi and Clarke welcome them to Eden with open arms and eager hearts. In which the ground is flush with life and love and hope.In which Bellamy and Clarke are ready--and willing--to be honest with each other.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 52
Kudos: 267





	1. Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verbaepulchellae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/gifts).



> For those of us who want to pretend the show ended a few seasons back, and who are looking for some soul-affirming love and affection.
> 
> I loved the [sense of wonder](https://diymfa.com/writing/man-natural-world-case-study-literary-themes) in the early seasons of the show. Consider this an attempt to recapture that here, too.

“I don’t see it.”

“You’re looking in the right direction.”

“Well, I don’t _see_ it.”

A long silence, bordering on uncomfortable. The moon is barely visible, a mere sliver of curving silver light, still dim enough that it doesn’t interrupt their astronomy lesson.

A midnight breeze ruffles the leaves around them. In the distance, a bird coos out a morose mating call. And then--unexpectedly, joyfully--an eager reply.

Her breath catches in her chest. Despite their soggy autumn and frozen winter, life has still found a way to creep into the forest in ones and twos.

She gives in, and points: “Okay. You see Casseiopeia’s throne?”

“Yes. Right there.”

“And you see Aries? The Ram?”

“Of course.” Then, a gasp. “Oh, is that her, in the middle?”

“Yes. That’s Andromeda. A whole galaxy, right there.”

“I thought that was Perseus!”

“Nope. He’s just above her, see? Just there. But they’re close to each other on purpose, Andromeda and Perseus. Andromeda was supposed to be sacrificed to a sea monster to satisfy Poseidon’s wrath, but Perseus swooped in on Pegasus and saved her.”

“Oh—like Bellamy did with you, right, Clarke? You know—when he tried to save you from Roan?”

Another breeze. Another bird call.

The girl is quieter when she speaks again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad, Clarke, I promise.”

“I’m not sad. Just surprised.” A clearing of the throat. “But you know that Bellamy didn’t steal me away, in the end. And I don’t think the plan was to chain me to a rock and let a god eat me.”

The younger girl takes a breath, like she wants to say something. Contradict her, maybe. Likely. But for both their sakes, she keeps her retort inside. Instead: “I like that the stars have stories. It’s better than algebra.”

A chuckle. A press of a kiss to her temple. “You and me both.”

* * *

It took them longer than they expected to figure out the fuel issue.

Getting the oxygen system turned on was just the first step in the years-long marathon of somehow keeping seven people alive on an abandoned space station for multiple years on end. 

Monty’s algae kept them alive, but it almost killed them a few times, too. Something was always going sideways with the septic system. Lethargy and depression settled into their bones, made homes for themselves there.

Surviving on the Ring was a real, tangible daily struggle. Preparing the dropship for eventual atmospheric re-entry was a...longer term goal.

Besides, what was the rush to re-fit the fuel system for algae ethanol if the surface scanners kept spitting out reports that there hadn’t any detectable oxygen or nitrogen?

Bellamy remembers, clear as a bell, the day it all changed. 

The surface scanner runs on 36-hour cycles, set in tandem with the station’s orbit around the planet, compensating for the moon’s counter-pull. More than a thousand scans have ended with the same disappointing three-note chime, the beeps tumbling down the scales along with their hopes.

And then --

\-- at 3:42 GMT on June 25 --

\--the surface scanner finishes its review of Earth’s biological data and returns a system-wide emergency alert in an upbeat five-note staccato.

They’d gathered around the screen, blinking, rubbing their eyes in disbelief at the values on the screen before them. 

One thousand, eight-hundred and forty days after they left the ground, atmospheric gasses had reached habitable levels for complex carbon-based life forms.

Without another word, Raven picked up her bowl of breakfast porridge, carried it to her drafting table in the hanger bay, and got to work.

* * *

“Pressurizing.” Emori reaches across the motherboard with her good hand to press a small green button. 

A hissing sound. Bellamy’s ears pop. He winces.

Raven nods. Flicks a series of switches. “Disengaging locks.”

Another hiss, a metallic grinding, and then their drop pod drifts--free--in open space. In the circular frame of the single porthole, a riveted seam in the Ring’s outer shell floats by.

“Forward thrusters, ‘Mori,” Raven prompts. Her voice shakes only a little. 

Emori wraps her hand around the joystick and slowly, steadily, eases it backwards. Another hiss, louder this time, and the pod accelerates gently, putting several feet of empty space between it and the Ring. 

Then--several yards. 

More and more--

\--until for the first time in six years, an entire quartent of the ring in which they’d lived years fills the window of the pod. Looks comically small. Like he could reach out and pinch it between his fingers.

  
No one else speaks. Monty winds his fingers through Harper’s. Echo’s eyes are closed, her lashes fluttering. He can tell from the particular twist of her brow that she’s praying. Their airtight metal rooms have always made her uncomfortable, restless.

Raven’s uncharacteristically quiet. There’s a tiny tremor in her hands as she takes control of the joystick and rolls the pod onto its back. 

Earth rises in the window, a blue marble streaked with white, brown, green.

Bellamy’s surprised that he doesn’t feel the trepidation or fear the others clearly do. Strange, given the twin horrors have been his constant companion for the past six years and seven days. 

Sometimes the both of them could be found in the double-beat of his heart: Stay a- _live_ , stay a- _live_ , stay a- _live_.

Well, if nothing else in this life, he can die well today knowing that he’s kept his promise to her. 

They’re alive.

The next few hours will test all their calculations with what Bellamy knows will be an unexacting margin of error. Monty’s calculations are right, or they’re not. Raven will land them safely, or she won’t. So simple. So fucking, _wonderfully_ simple. 

Bellamy doesn’t think he’s ever been so calm in his life.

Raven exhales and reaches upwards. “Firing engines.”

A rumble starts deep in the pod’s belly, and--

\--away they go.

* * *

It’s a long trip, longer than Bellamy remembered. It must have been the adrenaline back then, on their return trip to the Ark, he surmises. The fear. The panic.

The grief.

He can still feel the hatch’s grip in his hand. Pulling it closed, his hands encased in thick rubber gloves, not bare like they’d been a few hours before--calloused and scarred from years of helping Raven with circuitry and Monty with chemicals.

It’s what she would’ve done. It’s what she _did_ , back at the Dropship, when he and Finn hadn’t made it back in time to be on the 89’s side of the Ring of Fire. Not that that’d ever made it any easier for him to sleep at night.

_Who we are, and who we have to be to survive, are two very different things._

A snort escapes him. He sometimes can’t believe what had come out of his mouth back then. All bravado and courage, nothing but a performance to trick others into being brave and courageous, too.

She’d always been the brave one. The bravest of all of them. The kindest, too. Always willing to give second chances, third chances to people Bellamy would’ve written off after the first moment his family and friends were put in danger. He still doesn’t approve of all of her choices, but he’s had six years of sleepless nights and miles of dark, lonely hallways to roam. 

He understands better, now, why she made the ones she did.

They hit the mesophere, and he’s jolted out of his thoughts. The dropship shivers down through it, cutting through the thin gas easily enough. 

“Strato’s next. Make sure you’re strapped in,” Emori cautions them, tugging at her own harness.

That one’s a rumble. Bellamy grits his teeth and presses his head back against the headrest.

Something crackles and pops over the speakers. “--faiya--know--I do this--”

“What is that?” Harper calls.

Raven’s fingers fly across the keyboard. “It’s a radio signal,” she shouts back, tuning a dial. It’s rough with the turbulence, and the speakers squeal more than once.

“Radio?” Monty asks. “You’re sure? From who?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” she snaps. “It’s coming across a damn radio frequency, Green.”

“--bunker...too...-ch rubb-- hav---contact--. --way -- still have hope…”

That husk. He knows it. He _knows_ that voice. The recognition, and his sureness hits him like a knee to the chest.

Murphy speaks up, and Bellamy can tell in his voice that he’s realized it too. “It could be a recording. Playing on repeat.”

It’s true, Bellamy knows. She’d be smart enough for that. She’d know they’d head back to the ground eventually, and she’d want to give them any final information. But that means she’d have had time after Praimfaya to record a message, to upload it, to set it to repeat...

“... raven to aim ... spot of green ... you’ll find me. The rest of the planet from what I’ve seen basically sucks, so--”

They enter the troposphere with a resounding sonic boom. For a long moment, everything is silent and ringing white, his friends cursing soundlessly, shaking their heads with him.

And then --

  
“Nevermind,” Clarke says. Her warm, incredulous, _alive_ voice hums over the cabin’s speakers. “I see you.”


	2. Crash Landing on You

As she sprints down the ridge, her boots slip and slide in the gravel, the mud. 

There was a gullywasher yesterday-- nothing but pounding, _pouring_ rain for hours on end.

Her heel sinks in a soft spot and skids sideways, shooting her heart into her throat. She windmills her arms, stays upright, and keeps moving forwards.

The sudden burst of reckless speed makes her lungs ache. She’s not used to wild exertion--part of how she’s kept herself (and Madi) alive has been because of how carefully and conscientiously she’s chosen to move over the past few years. And yet here she is, leaping a fallen log, stumbling, hitting the ground and springing back up without checking her palms or laces as she normally would’ve. She pushes forward. Keeps going. 

Keeps running. 

Keeps  _ hoping _ .

Finally the trees begin to thin, showing the golden pink sky through their crisp-burnt branches. The thrusters have scalded a circle into the earth—its own Do-It-Yourself landing pad. She bursts through the break of burnt stumps onto bare ashen earth and there--

_ There _ , seated on a charred starburst of half-blitzed cedar and oak trees: the dropship.

The dropship and her  _ friends _ .

She spots Raven’s ponytail, tilted back as the girl--no, she’s a woman now, a real  _ woman _ \--lifts her face towards the ambient warmth of the sun setting in the west.

A few yards away, Harper upends her stomach. Monty’s hand rests on her back; his face bows towards hers.

Another woman is folded on the ground, fingers laced over her head. Echo. With Emori beside her, curled in the arms of a man with a hooked nose she recognizes as Murphy’s. It’s been five years, but she recognizes them, clocks them, registers them as though they’d only parted weeks ago.

_ And-- _

_ And-- _

_ And-- _

“Clarke? Oh my god— ** _Clarke_ _!_** ”

He meets her bodyrush with one of his own. They collide--rough, slamming, knocking the last bit of air from her chest. His arms are like bands of iron wrapping around her. He lifts her, his tears hot and wet on her throat--

He's strong, warm against her body. The weight and solidarity against her makes her gasp, because he's real.

He's here, with her.

He lifts her off her feet and hugs her close. 

His voice, past-present-strange-familiar, repeats her name into her hair like a prayer. She closes her eyes and catches the smell of him in waves: stale, recycled HVAC air; a starchy laundry detergent; something alive and green, like a pond at dusk, and him. Him. Warm skin. Clean curly hair. The sweatsalt of his skin at the tail end of a hard day’s work.

He sets her down onto her own feet, but she doesn’t let go. Can’t let go. She grabs hold of her wrists behind his neck, and he stoops down to stay in her embrace.

“Bellamy,” she sighs into his skin. “Oh, Bellamy.”

* * *

They’re delighted by Madi. She’s neutral territory, something new and untouched by everything they’d all experienced together since being ejected from the Ark as unwanted delinquents. She’s just as excited as they are, meeting the flesh-and-blood counterparts to her bedtime stories, and her rapidfire questions fill the (thankfully) short drive back to their settlement she’s named Eden.

“Raven, you  _ really _ blew up a bridge?” the girl asks, stars in her eyes.

Raven opens her mouth, closes it. Shrugs. Swats away Murphy’s bony finger poking into her shoulder. “I just set the bomb, really--”

“--right, Jasper made the shot,” Madi finishes, nodding sagely.

“Madi, don’t interrupt,” Clarke chastens from the driver seat. Part of it is for respect. Part of it, though, is because this is the most voices, real voices, that have echoed inside the Rover in years. They cross over each other at times, raucous and vivacious, like nails on a chalkboard.

Bellamy rides shotgun. Not even Madi had challenged him for it. His gaze darts to the world around them--fading to shadows in the falling twilight--and Clarke at his left, guiding the Rover around boulders and wide sweepss of meandering creekbed as though she has a second sight.

The little girl shuffles forward between the front seats. “And you really crawled through the airvents?” She fixes him with her bright gaze. “You’re...bigger than I thought.”

“It’s been a few years,” Bellamy hedges. “I might have put on a few pounds.”

“So you did, then?” Madi pushes. “You really did? Clarke wasn’t lying?”

She feels the weight of Bellamy’s gaze on the side of her face, but she can’t meet it. Won’t meet it, maybe. Light is fading. So is her courage, it seems.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, “doesn’t lie.”

* * *

She doesn’t know where to start--how to introduce them to Eden. Her home. 

_Their_ home.

But it seems like they don’t know where to begin, either. Where her explanations of the settlement are disjointed--here, their sleeping hut, there, their laundry bins, and over here, where she and Madi spend a few hours each day in school--their reactions are wide-eyed and overwhelmed.

She stops, and soon, when she sees their eyes have glazed over with exhaustion and overwhelm. The sun is low in the sky anyway, so she takes a breath and invites them inside so she can figure out what to feed them.

Their cottage is cluttered with clothes and half-finished hobbies. She’s hyper aware of the mess, of a sudden, driven with an urge to hide it away and apologize for the mess.

Madi steps in, more eager than she’s been in at least a season. She shows off the sketches that hang around the room, illustrates how the chimney flue works while Clarke pulls out provisions for the evening.

“Algae,” Monty offers, when Clarke asks what they’ve lived on for their years in space.

“And?” she prods, distracted, using her hunting knife to hack up strips of squirrel jerky and scatter them over a bowl of dandelion greens.

“And nothing,” he replies. He watches her work with interested, hungry eyes. “Just algae. Algae porridge, algae bars...we made some bread with it the first year. There were a few bags of flour stashed in the kitchens, but. That eventually ran out.”

Her heart clenches in her chest, aching in sympathy for what had to have been mind-rendingly monotonous days on Alpha Station without even a change in the menu to break it up. Her mind--a medic’s mind--keeps her from shoving the entirety of their winter stores on them.

“We’ll have to ease you back into it then,” she finally says. She passes him the salad bowl with a small smile. “Into real food, that is.”

“Best news I’ve heard in years.” His eyebrow quirks a bit, and she knows he means it.

The little table she and Madi usually sit at clearly isn’t big enough for all of them. Raven and Emori take the chairs while the rest of them settle on the ground and the couch, plates and bowls. Clarke urges them to go slowly and not overwhelm their stomachs. They’ve been surviving so long on mushed algae that their bodies must adjust, she warns.

It’s still awkward, all of them being back together after so many years apart. Mannerisms are the same, still, the way Harper tilts her chin, how Murphy rolls his eyes. And yet it’s strange for Clarke, having so many bodies to watch. Having so many bodies crammed into nooks and crannies around her. The sound of so many people breathing, swallowing, laughing in her small home.

It’s...overwhelming. Unsettling. Even the quiet presence of Bellamy beside her isn’t enough to put her at ease.

Harper and Echo scrape the last of their food from their bowls and Madi pipes up with an eager, shy voice. “What about some fruit and honey for dessert, Clarke? This is a ‘special occasion,’ right?”

She hesitates, chewing the inside of her mouth. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea, sweetheart.” Her friends’ faces fall, too tired to hide it, and she clarifies: “For their stomachs. I don’t want to make them sick.”

“Oh, c’mon, we can handle a little,” Murphy winks. And Madi wheedles, “We don’t have to give them a whole  _ jar _ .” 

It’s Bellamy who convinces her against her better judgment. It’s what he’s always been good at. “It’s their food, Murphy, and we’ve already eaten too much of it,” he rasps, speaking for the first time in hours. “Don’t be greedy.”

It makes her heart sink, being accused of stinginess--even in passing--on her friends’ first night back on Earth.  _ Earth _ . 

“Fine,” she concedes. She gives the younger girl a smile and a nod. “Madi’s right. It’s a special occasion. Go get the dried apples and some honey -- the jar that’s already open. There should be enough in there.”

Madi drops her plate and sprints up the ladder to the loft.

“You don’t have to,” Bellamy mutters, while the others whisper among themselves about sweets and fruit,  _ real fruit _ .

“It’s springtime. We’ve started our garden and there will be more hives to raid in a few months,” she replies, matter of fact. “A little dessert could do more harm than good for your spirits. And some sugar could actually help your bodies recover more quickly from the drop, now that I’m thinking about it. But only a little. If you’re going to throw it up, go outside,” she warns everyone.

He smiles, tension eased from his face. “Still a medic, I see, after all this time.”

“Born and raised,” she quips.

“It’s just the two of you, then?” He asks quietly, after Madi hands him a sensible three apple rings topped with a thin drizzle of honey. 

She’s been waiting for this question. It’s hung heavy in the lulls in the conversation throughout the evening. In the glances Raven and Monty have shot his way.

It’s been his question to ask, on his own terms, she’s surmised.

She waits for the bliss of the sweet fruit and honey fade from his expression before she answers. “We lost contact with the bunker a few years ago,” she tells her plate. “It’s about a day’s drive east from here. I drive out a few times a year but it’s still locked. From the inside.”

His reply is a few moments in coming. Clarke listens to the others entertain Madi with tales from the Ring while she waits. Finally: “Will you take me there? When we’re settled in here?”

He’s staring at his plate, too, intently studying the last bit of honeyed apple between his fingertips.

She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah. I’ll take you to it.”

* * *

It takes a few days, but she starts to see it.

Harper cupping her hand around the back of Bellamy’s neck when she gets up from lunch. Echo looping an arm around Murphy’s shoulders and pressing a lingering kiss to his cheek. Emori winding her fingers through Raven’s on Madi’s tour through the kitchen garden, tugging her close and pressing a kiss to the back of the Spacewalker’s hand.

Clarke squeezes her sponge and scrubs the lather into one of the plates from dinner. She watches Madi point out the crop of cherry tomatoes coming in, how Murphy leans an elbow on Monty’s shoulder and asks a question of the little girl that sends her into a fit of giggles.

“You all seem...close,” she says, dunking the plate into a bucket of clean water and passing it to Bellamy. 

“‘Close’?” he echoes, sounding confused before he follows her gaze across the yard. “Ah.” He wipes down the plate with a soft cloth and sets it atop the pile. It’s the last from their lunch--steamed wild greens, deer jerky, and preserved apples--and he tosses the cloth over his shoulder as he leans back in his chair. “Six years is...a long time.”

She hooks her ankle over the opposite knee and plucks at the laces so she doesn’t have to look at him. “A long time for you, too?” Something deep inside her knows she should be looking him in the eye to ask something so personal. But he’s right--six years  _ is _ a long time. A long time to be alone with just a child and her own mind for comfort. Whereas he’s had...them.

She picks at an eyelet on her boot. His hand reaches out and covers her own, freckled and heavy and warm.

“Clarke.”

He’s scooted closer without her realizing. Shifted in his chair to face her more fully, his knee brushing her own. 

Her eyes sting with unwelcome and stupid tears as his quiet confirms what she’d feared. That he’d found affection and companionship in space. Partners for his bed as well as for his work. That while she’d scraped one wretched day after another from the cruel, angry earth, he’d been able to bury himself in the comfort and softness of others’ arms.

His hand leaves hers--but only to rise up and wipe away the traitorous tear tracing down her cheek. “Clarke,” he breathes again. “That was then. This is now.”

She chases his hand with her own, swiping at her eyes so that when she faces him, it’s with a clear vision. “There’s no reason things should change for you,” she tells him. 

The worrylines in his forehead shift and fold into something else, something worse. Pity? No. Empathy. Compassion. Earnestness.

“I want it to be different,” he admits, in a whisper--like it were something sacred. “Clarke, do you think -- have you ever thought about what things would’ve been like, if you’d made it back in time?”

Tears rise again, shameful and  _ wanting _ . She moves to turn away but he catches her again, a calloused palm on her cheek to keep her faced towards the messy truth of them. She lifts a hand to his wrist and leans into it, not so much uncaring of who might see but unable to acknowledge anyone else exists in this moment but him--but Bellamy.

“Have you?” he presses.

“Of course I have,” she admits, unable to lie to him. “It’s all I used to think about, but I found Madi and it felt...selfish. Pointless.”

“Selfish.” His fingers drag down her cheek, brush against the corner of her mouth. “Pointless. Believe me when I say I know the feeling, Princess.”

“Oh, back to  _ ‘Princess,’ _ are we, Blake?”

Clarke flings herself away from Bellamy at Murphy’s drawl. The other man seems delighted by what he’s walked up on, a laugh hiding in the curve of his mouth. Madi’s under his elbow, and he tugs her in close, bouncing a finger between the couple before him. “That’s what Bellamy used to call Clarke when he was covering up how much he liked her,” he tells the girl in a stage whisper.

“Covering...up…?” Madi starts to repeat, but Murphy pulls her off to the west end of the plaza, promising her a dramatic story about a hunting pit and biometric wristbands.

Clarke’d jerked her forehead away from Bellamy’s at the interruption, but he’s kept a hold of her hand and squeezed it through Murphy’s interruption. Keeping her close. He can see now, when he turns back to her, the way she’s rearranged her expression to shove her flash of vulnerability under the hard exoskeleton of a survivor.

He ignores it. Runs his thumbs over her knuckles. Winks, feeling a little roguish and like she might need a flare of the reckless herself after spending six years trying to keep Madi alive all on her own. “Come find me when you want to be… pointlessly selfish.” He rises from his chair and leans over to kiss her. Not on her mouth--though its surprised moue and the shaky inhale he hears her take are tempting--but on her cheek.

Chaste. Friendly. Promising.

_Promising for what?_ , she begs to ask, late at night, with Madi curled close to her. 


	3. Gentle, Gentle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted more feral Clarke being weird around people in S5 so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

Part of her wishes that she would be selfish the very next time she found herself alone with him. 

_I can be fun_ , she’d declared to Finn and Wells, after all. 

There’d many times, then and now, that Clarke fantasized about how _fun_ it would be to kiss Bellamy Blake. Get his curls between her fingers, feel the hug of his arms around her waist. 

Early on, her teenage hormones hadn’t cared that she thought he was too chaotic, too unpredictable for a time that called for level-headed leadership. Because Bellamy was--is--always has been--a very attractive man. Even when they spat and cursed into each other’s faces, calling each other everything but a child of God, a sly pull in her gut wondered what he’d actually do if she grabbed him by the lapels of his stupidly hot jacket and asked for a cease-fire makeout. 

She came close once, after she escaped Mount Weather. In the heartbeats between catching sight of Bellamy across Camp Jaha’s entry yard and finding herself wrapped up in his arms, she nearly did kiss him. Not as a declaration of love (she wasn’t quite there yet, back then) but more from relief, adrenaline, and overwhelming gratitude. 

It’s a special kind of joy, seeing someone walking, _alive_ , right there in front of you, when you’d already made your peace with their likely demise. The universe’s wholesale rejection of your cynical expectations jolts home the realization that you _liked_ this person. You’d enjoyed their company. And you’ve been missing them, _really_ missing them in a way that you’d tried and clearly failed to ignore. 

And well, what can the human body and mind _do_ with all of that, other than to kiss them? 

Reason returned to Clarke just in time, and she swerved her way into the first in a series of platonic embraces whose lingering memories of warmth and strength periodically stir up the curious heat in her belly.

She reflects often on all the missed chances, trying to pinpoint the various times and ways she could have leaned up, ducked in, tugged him around a dark corner. At the time, duty had always shown up at the last moment and stomped down the rising urge to cup her hands around his neck and see if his mouth was as soft as it looked. 

And Bellamy’s all but told her she can.

_Come find me when you want to be pointlessly selfish_.

But--isolation is an odd beast. You forget about other people. As alive and well as Clarke’s friends have been in her mind, her mind is where they have lived for five years. And she couldn’t even visit them very often, when most of her waking hours were consumed with trying to eke survival out of the physical, tangible world around her.

And her outsideworld is fundamentally non-human--it’s made up of stalwart boulders and swaying saplings, melodic birdcall and rustling brooks. Imagine that for five years, you have only one other human for company. One small, gangly girl with a sweet, high voice whose grin makes you feel fierce, capable. _Motherly_ \--the last thing you’d ever thought you’d be worthy of, after all terrible things you’d done in your life.

Now imagine that suddenly, a faded memory from a long-lost world makes itself flesh before you.

Because here’s the thing: Bellamy Blake is taller than Clarke's remembered. Older. Wider and … _thicker_? The idea feels crass but it’s there, spinning out in her head when they’re doing simple chores like restacking firewood or carrying water. When those thoughts about kissing him, doing it, now, _now_ , jump to her head, as though five years haven’t passed.

The Clarke of yesteryear would have acted within hours of getting Bellamy’s sly green light. She’d have worked up a plan and executed it, like she’s done for everything else she’s ever decided she wanted. 

But for days, fear holds her back. A strange, stupidly urge to leap up and flee whenever Bellamy--the real flesh and blood _right-now_ Bellamy, with a real gruff voice and dangerously broad shoulders--circles through her obit. 

She barely met his eyes the first few days, when they all worked like dogs from dawn til dusk expanding the garden plot. Clarke started an emergency seed bank two seasons ago, and the sudden arrival of five new mouths to feed certainly qualified as an emergency.

The critical side of her brain whispers doubts that the few dozen tomato, squash, and bean seeds will even make that much of a difference, what with the low germination rate in Eden’s denuded soil. It’s also mid-March, a little late in the season to be planting seeds for summer crops, isn’t it?

She soothes herself with reassurances that even a modest success would make the grueling physical effort worth it.

She’s grateful that the long days and hard work cover for the fact that words fail her every time he comes near. Her replies are short, to the point, and--the action-oriented man that he is--he doesn’t necessarily linger for elaboration.

Then, they find themselves clearing out the cabin across the plaza for living quarters. Bellamy decides he wants to take his shirt off for that, hefting cabinets and furniture with Monty and Murphy to make way for pallets and lamps that run on the handful of solar panels powering Eden. The sun is bright and clear and he’s got _hair_ on his _chest_ and Clarke’s skin breaks out in goosebumps. She heelturns into Raven and blurts out a stupid electricity question to avoid having to return Bellamy’s mid-day shit-eating grin after some joke at Monty’s expense with anything more than a smile and a wave.

It’s only when Madi groans over their dinner of dandelion greens and pickled squash that tomorrow is _laundry day_ that Clarke realizes her friends have been back on the ground a full, entire week.

“I’ve been wondering when that would come up,” Murphy remarks from the other side of the room. Emori jabs him with her elbow. “What? I mean, listen guys--I only brought two changes of clothes and you all know they’ve been _fragrant_ the past few days.”

“Murphy,” Emori hisses, cheeks pink.

The exchange sends Madi into a fit of giggles (she’s _fascinated_ by the romantic dynamics) and Clarke explains from her perch on the stairs to the loft that they wash their clothes on Fridays.

“Frigg’s day, patron goddess of the household,” Madi recites, like she’s taking one of Clarke’s pop quizzes.

“That’s what, Norse?” Bellamy asks from just a few steps below her, plate balanced on his knees. “I gotta say, I’m a little hurt.”

(He says it with a twitch of a wink, so she knows he’s joking, and her heart skips)

“Well,” she replies, aiming for blasé. “We had to work with what I found scavenging. Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology it was,” she explains with a shrug. 

He grins up at her, his jaw soft in the candlelight. “Understandable.”

So she tells him--quickly, before her courage leaves her--that she’s going out to the river first thing in the morning. “Would you...do you want to come with me?”

His grin widens.

* * *

Laundry day dawns bright and cold. He waits for her at the treeline with a five gallon buckets at his feet. She’s not far behind him, emerging from her dark cabin with a bulky contraption strapped to her back, and stomps her way through the dewy grass to meet him.

“I realized something just now,” she declares when she stomps up to meet him, annoyance crinkling her nose. “This is going to be...a lot of water for all of us. We should figure out how to do this with the Rover--”

“--Okay--” 

“But I haven’t cut back the Rover’s track in months,” she gripes. She tugs at the backs of her gloves, then shoves her hands into the pockets of her oversized work jacket with a huff. She’s still blinking sleepily, yawning now and then, and she’s missing her trademark mug of morning tea..

“Ah,” he says, understanding. He glances back at the little village--just a cluster of old park service winter cabins and a few outbuildings, really, and still slumbering quietly in the grey morning light--and then down the trail into the forest. “Well. It’s just a mile down that way, right? Let’s do it this way once to get started, and after we get back and eat, we can go look at the Rover’s track. How about that?”

She nods, visibly relieved to not have to start altering her plans so early in the day. “Good plan.”

Their walk down to the small waterfall is quiet and companionable, both of them still waking up along with the birds and squirrels surrounding them. A full week on the ground, and the _soundsmellfeel_ of it all is still delightful and new for Bellamy. So many of his memories from Earth are stained with fear, panic, and anger. And even when he let him think about returning to the ground, he found himself dreaming about Octavia, mourning Clarke, and dreading the work that lay ahead of them.

So he’s forgotten about the little things. Stepping on a stick, sparking a cracking echo that startles a cardinal roosting on a nearby branch. The bright red flash of its feathers as it takes flight and its spontaneous and chirruping birdsong. The little sprigs of early spring wildflowers bursting from the mud at the base of the massive oaks looming protectively above them. The unexplainable delight of a large fire after a long day. The broadness of the _outside_.

And--she’s laughed huskily at him, now, having caught him crouched low to check out a bright green worm--Clarke. The biggest surprise of them all.

“Those’re fine out here,” she nods at the caterpillar and adjusts one of her pack’s straps. “But you’ve gotta kill the ones you find in the garden.”

“Duly noted,” Bellamy replies, and falls back behind her on the narrow path towards the rushing water he can hear now. 

It’s a strong little mountain creek, running flat and smooth down the eastern slope and turning sharp and tight to shoot out over the jutting lip of a granite boulder. She leads him up and around to the top of the little waterfall, where the water runs fast and deep, and drops her pack.

“It’s a corny keg,” she tells him proudly when he asks. She unsnaps the modified clasp and rolls it into the creek, holding it in place with a well-placed boot. “It’s heavy but it’s genius, right?”

He loves the curl of delight in her voice, like she’s so surprised she was the one to come up with this idea. “Probably because a _genius_ came up with it,” he reminds her.

She huffs and rolls her eyes--and waves him off. “Nah, you’ll see. It’s a little chaotic right now, but thing’s’ll slow down soon and--” she tosses her hands into the air “--all of sudden you have like, five hours with nothing to do but sit and stare at the wall. And that’s when the crackpot ideas show up.” She shoots him a playful wink (a rare gift he’ll replay a dozen times later today) and leans down to heave 18 litres of water out of the creek.

Bellamy has missed Clarke so fucking much.

“Five hours, huh? That’s a long time for all of us to be doing ‘nothing,’ I’d say,” he says, unable to help it because she’s been so fun to flirt with over the past few days. A full-on jumble of nerves, going bright pink and tongue-tied every time she’s realized he’s around. It’s the cutest shit he’s seen in a long time, yet so very _unlike_ the pragmatic, level-headed girl she used to be that he’s actually taken a bit of mercy on her, keeping a wide berth whenever possible so her head doesn’t explode on her.

She’s doing it now--her eyes widen comically, her hands go to her hips. “Well--” she starts, voice a solid octave higher, talking to the trees on the other side of the creek rather than to him.

“I’m joking, Princess,” he laughs. It’s early still, and they’ve a long walk to go, and he doesn’t want to spook her off. He picks up his bucket and steps up to where she’d stood, happy to change the subject back to safer territory. This is the longest they’ve been alone, together, _just the two of them_ , in _days_ and it’s been so _good_ so far. “So, I just drop it in right here? And then--”

She grabs his wrist, hard, surprising him because he’d not been off balance. She turns him back, and his bucket falls from his hand, and all he sees before she’s kissing him is a flash of a very, very determined Clarke.

For a blissful second and a half, it’s just Clarke’s small, firm mouth on his. _Oh_ , he thinks. _Oh_.

And then there’s a hollow clanging from where the bucket has been swept over the waterfall and onto the the rocks below. They both jerk back.

“Oh, no--” she blurts out.

“No?” he repeats.

“Not-- _no_ \--but--I--” She shakes her head with a groan and takes off away from him, gone as fast as she’d come.

“Oh,” Bellamy says. Then, coming to his senses, he turns on his heel and darts after Clarke.

He finds her at the bottom of the waterfall, fishing the bucket out of the creek several yards downstream. She drops it on the ground and squares up as he approaches, wiping her hands on her pants. 

“Bellamy, I’m sorry, I surprised you--” She doesn’t get to finish her apology, though, because this time he cuts her off with a kiss of his own.

There’s nothing to chase after this time, so he cups her cheeks and holds her fast. She sighs through her nose and her hands flutter to his elbows. They’re a little off center, but she shifts into him and he catches her lower lip between his, and _there they are_.

He lets her go after a minute, dragging his hands down to tangle with hers. Her hands are so small, and still chilly from their time in the water. The creek babbles happily beside them. A breeze ruffles the treetops.

“Okay. So,” Bellamy says, intelligently. “Yeah?”

She nods. A shy smile creeps across her face. He wants to lick the little mole on her lip. Her shoulders hike up, a little shy, and he wants to wrap his arms around her, curl her up into his chest. 

He settles for kissing her again, tucking a hand under her hair to stroke the smooth, warm skin of her neck. She’s corded with lean muscle--it’s impressive really--but he wants to find all of her soft places. The skin of her wrist, the curve of her lower back, the fine bones of her ankles. Her mouth, too. He swipes his tongue over the bow of her upper lip, begging entry, but she jumps a little under him, and he backs off.

“Sorry, it’s just--been a while,” she says.

He shakes his head and squeezes her hand. “I know. I get it.”

“But it’s good, otherwise,” she says, always the positive reinforcer. Her mouth twitches, and her eyes focus on his mouth. “I--don’t know how I feel about the beard, yet.”

He chuckles and runs a palm over it. “Yeah, it’s controversial.”

“But I don’t…not like it,” she says thoughtfully. 

He claps a hand to his chest. “Clarke Griffin, without an opinion? You are just full of surprises today.”

She shoves him a little, calls him a dick, and he tugs her back in to murmur his apologies against her mouth.

“We have to go back soon,” she chastises quietly, a few moments later.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kissing and sexy times coming soon. Drop a note to let me know what you think so far!


End file.
